"Nut Case" Korean Air Exec Fired & 4 More Friday Headlines

"Nut Case" Korean Air Exec Fired & 4 More Friday Headlines

Posted by Sylvester on Friday, December 12, 2014 0

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1) The daughter of the Korean Air chairman has been stripped of all exec titles. Cho Hyun-ah, head of in-flight services, berated her staff in public and forced a departing flight at New York's JFK airport to return to the gate to disembark a senior flight attendant, who had served her macadamia nuts in an unopened bag, rather than on a plate. The incident sparked outrage in South Korea, as a perfect symbol of the nepotism and outsized power of the country's family-run conglomerates. Korean Air chairman Cho Yang-ho apologized profusely on television today and announced his eldest child, 40, would no longer hold any executive role. “Please blame me; it’s my fault,” he said. “I failed to raise her properly.”

2) Verizon will help you encrypt your phone calls – but has left a backdoor open for the NSA to listen in. The app Verizon Voice Cypher will enable business and government customers to encrypt calls on any carrier, but Verizon will be able to decrypt them at law enforcement's request. BusinessWeek's Joshua Brustein explains here why Verizon didn't have to do that and went above and beyond the law to please authorities. Apple and Google have chosen a different, legal route to protect their customers, building a system even they can't decrypt so they can't comply with government requests. As my colleague John C. Abell noted this week, privacy and security features might soon become a huge selling point for cell phones.

3) Uber's troubles are miraculously not deterring investors. It's now Chinese giant Baidu that's rumored to be buying a minority stake in Uber, to the tune of $600 million. That would give Uber a local ally in cracking the ever-challenging Chinese market, and gives Baidu a horse in the race against other private car businesses in the country backed by Alibaba and Tencent.

4) Jim Atchison is stepping down as Seaworld's CEO – and moving up as its vice chairman with a cushy exit package. The marine theme park is struggling with poor attendance, declining revenue and dated attractions as the public starts to question the ethics of entertaining themselves on caged animals. The popular documentary Blackfish, which denounced the living conditions of captive orca whales at the park, captured and amplified that zeitgeist.

5) Nearly 43 million Americans have overdue medical debt, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And for 15 million of them, that is the only debt dragging down their credit. In all, 52% of debt reported on Americans' credit scores is medical. Worse yet, many don't realize they have it: debt collectors will often report to credit bureaus before even notifying the debtor that they have an outstanding bill. (And if you've ever seen a bill from a US hospital, you know how hard it is to understand what is what and what is due.) You might want to look into it.